Written as a study for readers of a history education magazine, this piece narrates Toussaint Louverture's career from the 1791 rising to his death at Fort de Joux in 1803, drawing almost entirely on secondary works by Stoddard, Korngold, Leyburn, Léger, Madiou and James. Woodward sets the insurrection against the decrees of the National Constituent Assembly, which granted political rights to free men of colour and set whites, mulattoes and slaves against one another. He follows Toussaint's shifts of alliance from Spain to France, his defeat of Rigaud, his occupation of Santo Domingo, and the 1801 constitution that made him governor for life. Considerable attention goes to the administration: courts reopened, whites invited back, export crops subsidised, roads built, cultivators kept on the plantations. The capture of Toussaint by ruse is treated as the pivot, with independence completed by Dessalines and helped by a British blockade.